Kurt Wallander is a police inspector in the Swedish town of Ystad. Shortly after he has seen a young girl kill herself by self-immolation, he is called to investigate the murder of government minister Wetterstedt. He has been scalped. Wealthy business-man Carlman is murdered in the same fashion, and a serial killer is clearly responsible.
Drunken ex-journalist Lars Magnusson points Wallander towards Sandin, a retired and corrupt cop, who admits that he once 'cleaned up' for both the dead men but will offer no more information.
The next murder is that of an habitual criminal, who has been tortured before death. His estranged wife and teen aged son are not grief-stricken. His behaviour has traumatized his younger son and sent his daughter into a mental hospital.
Following another scalping, and an appeal to the public, a former prostitute tells Wallander that all the victims were connected with a vice ring, importing very young girls into Sweden. The girl who killed herself was probably among them. A raid on Sandin's house reveals girls lined up for the sex trade concealed in his cellar. He is clearly the next intended victim of the scalper and Wallander has no qualms in using him as bait in the trap.

Inspector Wallander and his team investigate a murder and an unexplained death.
They arrest 18 year old Sonja Hokberg after they find a taxi driver stabbed to death in his car. Sonja is found covered in blood and freely admits to the killing, though she provides little additional information.
In the second case, the police find a dead man on the street who was apparently using the ATM. He is Denis Falk and the police learn that he had just recently been given a clean bill of health after a thorough medical exam.
When Sonja escapes from her jail cell and Falk's body is stolen from a mortuary, the police discover a link between the two. When they find Falk's computers running a mysterious program however, they find they are dealing with a terrorist plot. Wallander's social life takes a positive turn when his daughter Linda signs him up at a dating service and he gets a call from an attractive divorcée. Could this be the start of a new life?

Three youngsters are shot dead whilst having a woodland picnic in fancy dress. One girl's mother reports her as missing but postcards from Paris supposedly sent by the daughter negate any police involvement. Then another parent reports that Wallander's troubled colleague, Svedberg, had earlier expressed an interest in the kids' movements, and then Svedberg is also found shot, photos of the dead trio being found in his flat along with one of a mystery woman, identified by Svedberg's cousin as his ex-girlfriend Louise.
The corpses are found, and a friend of the victims is also slain, having told Wallander that his workmate was really gay, and that 'Louise' is a transvestite, and a wholly murderous one, who adds to his toll of dead by killing a further trio of innocents. Diagnosed as diabetic and aware that he never truly knew the dead colleague who regarded him as his best friend, Wallander must not only avenge Svedberg but halt a psychopath from an ordinary but obvious walk of life from striking far closer to home.

An elderly couple, the Lovgrens, are murdered at their isolated farmstead and Mrs. Lovgren's last word to Wallander seems to be "Foreigners." When this is leaked to the press a migrant labourers' camp is torched and a foreign worker shot by anonymous right wing vigilantes. Daughter Linda, dating a Syrian doctor, accuses Wallander of racism and, although Lovgren's brother-in-law tells the police that the dead man had a hidden fortune, which his murderers stole, and an illegitimate son, neither fact is immediately helpful. However, Wallander's obsessive pursuit of the owner of a car used in the revenge killing yields a result, though it almost costs him his job and the Lovgrens' slayers are finally cornered in a fairground.

Lawyer Sten Torstenssen tells Wallander he believes his old father's death in a car crash was homicide but Wallander is reluctant to act until Sten is found hanged and the pathologist claims that he was murdered. Sten's secretary shows Wallander a postcard of Africa with a text threatening the lives of father and son and wealthy philanthropist Harderberg, a client of Sten's, admits to also having received one. All were posted from the same hotel, apparently by industrialist Jurgen Nordfeldt, who survives an attempt to kill him. Nordfeldt had stumbled on a racket importing body parts from Africa which Wallander, helped by ex-cop Anders, now Harderberg's security guard, must resolve.

Three elderly men, Holger Eriksson, Gosta Runfeldt and Eugen Blomberg, are murdered in seemingly unrelated incidents. The smell of perfume on Runfeldt's suitcase suggests a woman's involvement. None are mourned by their families, who regarded them as bullies and womanizers, which shocks Wallander, whose own father has just died. A dedication in a book by Eriksson to a woman called Krista leads to the members of a former self-help group for abused women, attended by Vanja, Runfeldt's ex-lover. Is one of these women the killer?

Whilst investigating the death of a pregnant girl who was pushed off a ferry, Wallander discovers a ten-year old skeleton in the garden of the house where he lives with girl-friend Vanja. Elderly neighbour Fredrik points him towards the house's previous occupant, violent pimp Jan Petrus, whose daughter Ellika went missing a decade earlier. However, after the pregnant girl has been identified by a friend who is also killed, Ellika contacts Wallander and gives him vital information to help identify the skeleton and her murderer. A confrontation with the killer also solves the more recent double slayings.

The discovery of two slain youths in a dinghy which washes into Ystad brings hard-drinking Latvian detective Karlis Liepa from Riga. He tells Wallander they were his informants in a drug-smuggling ring after the dinghy, containing cocaine, is stolen. Liepa is murdered on his return home and Wallander travels to Riga to learn that the secretive detective did not show his case notes to his colleagues. After Wallander discovers that his hotel room is bugged and he is being shadowed, journalist Sergei Upitis tells him that Liepa was investigating corruption in his own force, but Upitis is framed for Liepa's murder and is found hanged in his cell. The Riga police then close the case. However, Wallander, working with Liepa's widow Baiba and her cousin Inese, locate the missing case notes to unmask the traitor in the Latvian force.

An elderly woman is murdered in a wood by a man she saw setting fire to swans. He buries her corpse with a bible annotating the book of Revelations and from his finger-prints he is identified as Jannek Langas, a religious maniac and arsonist. He has escaped from a secure unit but nonetheless has a healthy bank account in an assumed name. At the same time Anna, a friend of Linda, disappears after a cryptic visit to Wallander. Following Langas's suicide by immolation Wallander learns that Langas and Anna belonged to the same, fundamentalist Christian group and that other members are dying. Wallander must discover who is behind the killings and whether Anna is accomplice or victim - or even alive.

Wallander is drawn into the case of a missing Swedish national while attending a police conference in South Africa.

Kurt has medical problems while he searches for a missing girl after her mother was murdered.

Kurt is in a race against time as he embarks on his final case - the disappearance of his daughter's father-in-law.